Rachel Cooke on food + Period drama | The Guardianhttp://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/series/rachel-cooke-on-food+tv-and-radio/period-drama
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Downton, Parade's End and British food between the warshttp://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2012/sep/16/downton-1920s-food-rachel-cooke
The grandeur of life between the wars continues to fascinate us on TV this autumn. But just imagine the bother of cooking dinner for 56<p>Will the popularity of <em>Parade's End</em> (just ending) and <em>Downton Abbey</em> (just beginning) lead to a spike in sales for Penguin's beautiful reissue of <a href="http://www.guardianbookshop.co.uk/BerteShopWeb/viewProduct.do?ISBN=9781905490998" title="Arabella Boxer's Book of English Food">Arabella Boxer's <em>Book of English Food</em></a>? I hope so. An elegant if rather patrician writer – if I read her right, she is absolutely convinced that most domestic servants loved their work – Boxer tells the story of the flowering of English food between the wars, an unexpected bloom that occurred mostly in the houses of very posh people and which died with the outbreak of the second world war. The recipes are delicious, relatively straightforward, and fabulously camp. Even better, she cites the provenance of every one, with the unexpectedly spiffing result that, this autumn, we can all be a little bit posh. There is a certain amount of pleasure to be had in serving up a dish like Steamed Spring Vegetable Pie, and announcing casually: &quot;Ah, yes. This was a favourite of Lord Berners, you know. He used to serve it at Faringdon.&quot; But then, I have a borderline obsession with <a href="http://www.faringdon.org/hyberners.htm" title="greedy old Berners">greedy old Berners</a>, an aesthete who liked cream with everything, and who dyed his mayonnaise blue using a special powder sent from Paris by Vera Stravinsky.</p><p>It would be worth buying <em>English Food</em> for Boxer's opening essay alone. The anecdotes that stud it, like currants in a bun, are far funnier than anything Julian Fellowes has ever come up with. For instance: in the 1920s and 30s, professional cooks were careful to keep their best recipes secret. Take Mrs Woodburn, who cooked for the Mildmays for 50 years. (Who are these Mildmays? Boxer writes of them as if we should know, with the result that I have a strong urge to pretend that I'm on nodding terms with every one of their descendants.) Mrs Woodburn had an asparagus ice for which she was famous, and when the Queen Mother, then the Queen, was staying at Flete (where is this Flete? will my National Trust card permit me to stalk its ballroom?), she asked her for the recipe. Alas, no dice. &quot;Yer husband asked me for that,&quot; said Mrs Woodburn. &quot;But I wouldn't give it to him.&quot; If Fellowes wrote this scene, cook would blush to her roots, and rush off to inscribe the receipt in her best handwriting, on finest parchment.</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2012/sep/16/downton-1920s-food-rachel-cooke">Continue reading...</a>British food and drinkFood & drinkPeriod dramaFood and drinkLife and styleSocial historySocietyDownton AbbeyTelevisionSat, 15 Sep 2012 23:09:01 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2012/sep/16/downton-1920s-food-rachel-cookePRThe upper classes: great for costume dramas like Downton Abbey, just as good for British food. Photograph: Nick BriggsPRDownton AbbeyRachel Cooke2012-09-15T23:09:01Z